PREVIEW: 2023 A NIGHT OF HORROR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Australia’s longest running showcase of horror and dark genre cinema, A Night of Horror International Film Festival (ANOH) is back for its 15th year, with a typically frightening program. From 28th September to 1st October, the Festival will take over Dendy Cinemas Newtown, screening the very best in freaky, macabre and spine-chilling films from around the globe.

ANOH will present a total of ten features and 31 short films, hailing from different corners of the world, including Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Lithuania, Brazil, Switzerland, France, Denmark, India, and New Zealand.

“The calibre, ingenuity, and range of submissions this year truly surpassed all expectations. We were astounded by the exceptional talent and diversity on display, making the selection process a both challenging and exhilarating journey,” said Festival Director, Bryn Tilly.

“This year’s final line-up has films from all shades of the horror spectrum, and, as one would expect post- pandemic, many of them deal with grief and trauma, each promising to send shivers down your spine, immersing you in delightfully bizarre worlds and blood-curdling nightmares.”

Opening Night Thursday 28 September will see the world premiere of The Devil’s Work, the third instalment in Ursula Dabrowsky’s award-winning Demon Trilogy (Family Demons, Inner Demons). All three films stand alone, yet share similar themes of survival, revenge, and the loss of innocence.

Sydneysider Jack Dignan follows his 2022 ANOH award-winning debut feature After She Died with Puzzle Box, a riveting and deeply unsettling found footage purgatory tackling addiction and psychological trauma. Marie Alice Wolfszahn’s Austrian Mother Superior (pictured, right), winner of Best Film & Best Director at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2022, is a unique delve into witchcraft and folk horror.

The Festival’s much-loved signature event, the Australian Shorts Gala, will feature nine of the very best short-film shockers from these shores. The International Shorts Showcase will take place Sunday 1 October, showcasing a selection of the creepiest, freakiest new short films from around the world.

Other features include Sarah Tice’s feature film debut DID I?, a whip-smart, giallo-inspired study of alter personalities and the effects of trauma on the mind, body, and soul; Gareth Carr & David Sullivan’s Saving Grace, winner of Best Horror Feature at Washington DC International Cinema Festival 2023 and Liverpool Indie Awards 2023, a psychological thriller featuring a fierce, compelling performance from rising Aussie star Kirsty McKenzie; and, Nicholas Tomnay’s spellbinding neo-noir thriller What You Wish For, a morality tale roasting greed, told with crisp efficiency, laced with the sharp smack of horror.

Jonas Trukanas’s Pensive (pictured, top), a slasher flick screened in Lithuanian language with English subtitles, tackles social responsibility and identity roles in a very contemporary vein; The Coffee Table by Spanish Director Caye Casa is a pitch-black comedy that balances farce, melodrama, tragedy and absurdism and Winner of Best Film at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival; and, Chris Cronin’s The Moor presents a creeping tale of guilt that pushes the boundaries of folk horror and found footage format into Lovecraftian territory.

Closing out the festival is Steven John Mihaljevich’s Violett (pictured, right), a surreal exploration of trauma, abject grief, and destructive self-preservation, constructed like a poetic puzzle.

A Night of Horror International Film Festival will run 28th September to 1st October 2023 at Dendy Cinemas, 261-263 King St, Newtown. DETAILS HERE.

LARRY VAN DUYNHOVEN AND THE GUTS IT TAKES TO MAKE HORROR GREAT AGAIN

You would not know it by looking at his normal-in-every-way Aussie male exterior, but Larry Van Duynhoven creates movie moments that remain seared in your memory. From the infamous head drilling in Sean Byrne’s The Loved Ones to the battlefield carnage of Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge to the man-machine mayhem of Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade, the special effects make-up and prosthetic wizardry of Van Duynhoven is legendary, both in the Australian production sector and to horror fans the world over.

His latest masterwork can be seen in The Furies, director Tony D’Aquino’s all-or-nothing homage to the stark, splattery slasher pics of the 70s (notably, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and the 80s (Friday the 13^th, et al). Following the film’s recent screening at Fangoria x Monster Fest in Melbourne (where it won Best Australian Film), Larry Van Duynhaven spoke with SCREEN-SPACE’s Simon Foster before an enthralled crowd about creating horrible, beautiful viscera for your viewing pleasure…

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “When Tony came to Melb and we started talking about it, one of the first things I said to him was, “Can we get an R-rating?” And he said, “Sure, why not?” And I was frank, letting him know that so many horror films have been made over the last few years that don’t really hit a mark. I wanted to go a bit more crazy with the gore, otherwise we were only going to get three people in the cinema – you, and the producer and the projectionist. I told him, “Don’t think about Australia, think about the world” and he agreed and we kind of got on straight away.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “It was a $1.5million film, which is not a lot of money, but it forced us to really go for practical effects. And that was good for me. These days, you’re on-set a lot, and there’s a lot of just (overseeing) the CGI, that attitude of ‘We’ll put a bullet wound in later.’ There’s so much green everywhere, it’s just taken over. So, yeah, we got to do pretty much all of it practical, with just a couple of CG shots to clean things up later.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN:  “I don’t normally get to blow up heads myself. We make it, give it to the special effects guy who then get to put their explosives in, do all that fun stuff. But there was no affording that on this budget, so we had to build the rigs. So me and my team got to do almost everything, which was nerve-wracking. I had another effects make-up artist called Sheldon Wade and a young assistant Rachel Scane on-set, so it was just the three of us, plus Helen Magaleki doing make-up and hair, who helped us a lot. It was a bit crazy, but a lot of fun.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “In the six weeks pre-production time, I worked with a conceptual artist called Seth Justice. He’s a good friend, so I rang him and had him on board right from the start, thinking up some cool designs; Seth’s quite smart, not like me. Tony came with some ideas, which were terrible (laughs). No, not really, but we’d sort of seen them before – bunny rabbits, stuff like that, from Donnie Darko and You’re Next, a bit jumbled. I was trying to persuade him to go in another direction. And he was very open, he’s very good like that, but coming up with an idea that suited (the premise) of the film was hard to do.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “Seth came up with some very cool ideas that we ran with. The guy that’s wearing human skin, we tried to make him resemble ‘The Scarecrow’ in The Wizard of Oz. Tony wanted this babyface-type of character, so we modelled that a bit on Pinocchio. It was fun to take well-known characters from different films and stories and interpret them in this way.”

THE FURIES will screen Thursday October 31 at 9.30pm in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth as part of Fangoria x Monster Fest Takes on Australia 2019. Visit the event’s official website for full details.  

Photo credit: Jordan Hayne, ABC News.

WOMEN OF OZ HORROR ANTHOLOGY TEASED IN FIRST TRAILER

Hemlock & Cedar Films have released a teaser trailer for their horror anthology Dark Whispers – Volume 1 ahead of the World Premiere of the film at CinefestOz on August 30.

The selection of 10 horror shorts have been directed by Australian women filmmakers, with a wraparound narrative starring Andrea Demetriades (pictured, above) as ‘Clara’ and directed by Megan Riakos binding the diverse narratives.

The overarching plot focuses on Clara, as she begins to sort through her deceased mother’s home. She discovers a mysterious heirloom, the ‘Book of Dark Whispers’, filled with chapter after chapter of strange stories. Each weird tale reveals a new facet of the twisted human, or not so human, psyche. (Pictured, right; from left, 1st AC Carina Burke, Riakos, Demetriades. Photo: Lauren Orrell)

“Our motivation for making the film was to release more wicked and wonderful stories by women into the world, much as our protagonist unleashes powerful ideas with each page she turns,” says Riakos, director of the 2015 feature Crushed and NSW chair of the industry body Women in Film and Television (WIFT). “It’s a metaphor for the darkness that lurks within us all.”

In addition to Riakos, directors contributing to the project are Angie Black, Briony Kidd, Isabel Peppard, Janine Hewitt, Jub Clerc, Kaitlin Tinker, Katrina Irawati Graham, Lucy Gouldthorpe, Madeleine Purdy and Marion Pilowsky.

A high-profile roster of Australian acting talent is on board, including Asher Keddie (X-Men Origins: Wolverine; The Hunting), Anthony LaPaglia (Lantana; Holding the Man), Tosh Greenslade (Mad As Hell), Melanie Irons (Noirhouse) and Bree Desborough (Home and Away).

Riakos and producing partner Leonie Marsh are overseeing the project, with Deadhouse Films’ Enzo Tedeschi on board as Executive Producer and Briony Kidd, co-founder of female-focussed horror film event Stranger With My Face, serving as Associate Producer. (Pictured, left; l-r, Tedeschi, Riakos and Marsh) 

It was while attending Kidd’s Hobart-based festival that Riakos found inspiration for the project. In June, she told IF.com.au, “The festival focuses on female filmmakers whose films take a unique approach to genre storytelling. I wanted to bring films like that to a wider audience.”

Following the CinefestOz launch, Dark Whispers – Volume 1 will seek further festival placement ahead of a planned 2020 theatrical season.

Dark Whispers Vol. 1 OFFICAL TEASER from Megan Riakos on Vimeo.

NEKROMANCER TEASES THRILLS AND GIGGLES IN FX-HEAVY FIRST PICS

“It’s like an Aussie Ghostbusters on acid,” boasted director Kiah Roache-Turner to his Facebook followers after the recent release of four images from his highly-anticipated film, Nekromancer. Co-written with brother Tristan, the sophomore effort is their follow-up to the low-budget/high-energy zombie splatter epic Wyrmwood: Road of The Dead (2014), which earned critical kudos and a global cult following.

During it’s late 2017 pre-production period, the brother’s sci-fi/horror/comedy mash-up had the international horror community buzzing when it was announced Italian actress Monica Bellucci (L’appartement, 1996; Malèna, 2000;  Irréversible, 2002; The Passion of the Christ, 2004) would headline the Australian production, opposite local talent Ben O’Toole (Hacksaw Ridge, 2016) and Tess Haubrich (Alien: Covenant, 2017). (Pictured, below; Bellucci, as 'Finnegan', in conflict with 'Luther', played by David Wenham)

Although the shoot and plot details have been kept under wraps, a synopsis accompanies Screen NSW’s funding approval page: “Howard North, electronics genius, is dragged into a conflict between The Tribe - a family of powerful demon hunters, and Asgaroth - an evil demon possessing the world’s internet, assisted by his devil-worshipping corporate acolytes. Molly, a Tribeswoman and warrior, is desperate to destroy the demon and is sure that Howard has the right stuff to become a true hero. They must learn to work together to exorcise the fiend from the web and blow him back to Hell.” (Pictured, below; co-stars, l-r, Bob Savea as 'Rangi', and Ben O'Toole as 'Howard')

The production shot at Sydney’s largest soundstage facility, Fox Studios, located in the inner city suburb of Moore Park, as well as at various locations around the Harbour city. The local sector was rife with genre film production at the time of Nekromancer’s principal photography; director Abe Forsythe’s zom-rom-com Little Monsters, which imported international names Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther, 2018) and Josh Gad (Beauty and The Beast, 2017) to star opposite local talent, was also shooting at several Sydney locales. (Pictured, below; hero 'Howard' with, l-r, nekromancers 'Torquel', played by Tess Haubrich, and 'Molly', played by Caroline Ford)

DOP duties fell to the brother’s Wyrmwood lensman, Tim Nagle. Other key production duties were filled by top tier talent from the local sector, including line producer Sam Thompson; production designer Nicholas Dare (Down Under, 2016); composer Michael Lira (The Hunter, 2011); costume designer Xanthe Huebel (The Loved Ones, 2009; Ruben Guthrie, 2015); veteran casting director Nicki Barrett (Somersault, 2004; Australia, 2008; Mad Max Fury Road, 2015); concept artist Dane Hallett (Jupiter Ascending, 2015; Aquaman, 2018); and, 2^nd unit director James Chappell (director of the acclaimed short, Proceeds of Crime, 2017).

Nekromancer is a co-production between Hopscotch Features and the Roache-Turner’s Guerilla Films outfit; financing was sourced via Entertainment One (eOne), Screen Australia and Create NSW; eOne will partner with Sierra/Affinity for the international sales market.

LIVING SPACE: THE STEVEN SPIEL INTERVIEW

What begins as a cheeky nod to slasher film tropes ascends to all-out supernatural terror in Living Space, the accomplished feature debut of Melbourne-based writer/director Steven Spiel. A double-helix narrative that turns back on and into itself with increasingly skilful dexterity, Living Space reps a rare Australian foray into the horror of Nazi imagery set against a stylistically European landscape; the authentic aesthetic helped the film find favour at the recent European Film Market in Berlin, the first stop on a global sales roll-out that includes the all-important Marche du Film in Cannes in May. SCREEN-SPACE spoke with Spiel ahead of his film’s World Premiere, held in Sydney over the weekend as part of the Monster Fest ‘Travelling Sideshow’ program…

SCREEN-SPACE: Before the narrative amps up into some truly nightmarish moments, you have a lot of fun with the target audience’s appreciation of familiar horror set-ups…  

SPIEL: Brad (Leigh Scully) and Ashley (Georgia Chara) play a young American couple travelling through the heartland of Germany when their car breaks down in the middle of the countryside, forcing them to find protection in an abandoned property nearby. But, once inside, they find it is the home of a dead Nazi and his deceased family. So they go through a far amount of torment from that point on. It goes deeper and we use a great deal more psychological elements to flesh out the story, but that’s a basic outline.

SCREEN-SPACE: As the chilling ‘Officer’, actor Andy McPhee brings to life a truly memorable screen villain. What inspired the creation of such evil personified?

SPIEL: When I set out to write the film, I thought hard about whom the antagonist should be. I am really quite fearful of military iconography, that sort of grand authority figures, and the most frightening of all those types are the German SS officers of World War 2. So I threw all the familiar aspects of that imagery into the mix and the villain and the narrative grew from there. We use war footage in the film, because I wanted to acknowledge that we understood and were deeply respectful of the horrors of that period. But this is not any type of political statement at all; we just set out to make a solidly entertaining horror film. (Pictured, right; Andy McPhee, as Officer, with Georgia Chara in Living Space).

SCREEN-SPACE: Is horror a passion of yours, or was there one-eye on the genre’s international sales potential when you were deciding on your debut feature?

SPIEL: Well, it’s both actually. I’ve always been very passionate about horror. It’s a genre I have always enjoyed watching and I think when anyone sets out to make a film they should strive to make a movie that they would also like to watch. The characters, the arc have to be something that I would find intriguing. It is as crucial to the writing of the story as it is to the watching of the finished film.

SCREEN-SPACE: I’m assuming the indie-horror budget didn’t stretch to shooting in Germany…

SPIEL: We shot in Geelong, in Victoria, over a 12-day period. We got the whole cast and crew accommodated in Geelong, somehow. All the aerial footage, the countryside, everything that you see in the film is regional Victoria doubling as Germany. I worked very closely with our cinematographer, Branco Grabovic, and the post-production colouring team, both researching the look and feel of the German landscape and applying that knowledge to the final colour grading on the film. Being an independent film, we couldn’t get everyone over to Germany, which would’ve been ideal (laughs) but I think we executed it pretty well. (Pictured, left; cinematographer Branco Grabovic, left, with his director)

SCREEN-SPACE: You’ve stated that you don’t really want Living Space labelled ‘Nazi-exploitation’, despite your clever use of the iconography. What are the genre films and filmmakers that have influenced the story and mood of Living Space?

SPIEL: One that immediately springs to mind is Christopher Smith’s Triangle, with Melissa George. It’s a fascinating film that is both structurally complex and very entertaining. I’d also say Scorsese’s Shutter Island. These are films that explore the darker corners of psychology, unfold as engrossing mysteries, and end with a twist of some kind. All of my short films have that twist in the end, some sort of development that catches audiences off guard, and they have all informed what I’ve done in Living Space.

LIVING SPACE will screen in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Geelong as part of the 2018 Monster Fest Travelling Sideshow. For venues, dates and session times, check the official Monster Fest website.